Another wintry barbecue. Hoorah! There’s no reason not to cook outside just because it’s a damp and dreary November night. If we can stand around a bonfire with sparklers, then it’s just as fun standing round a barbecue listening to the sizzling meat of a heavily spiced spatchcock pheasant. I also paraffined up some ‘Swedish Log Fires’ to try and see better (or actually just to set fire to more stuff). Swedish log fires are great. All they are are logs, that you cut a cross into with a chainsaw, then start a fire in the middle, and they burn like an enormous candle. Apparently they’re good for cooking on too as you can just place a pan on top.

Anyway, back to the dinner. We had a pheasant. We had potatoes and leek from the allotment. We also had the desire for something hot and smoky, so rather than go down the classic French route, we thought we’d spice this bird up rather like Siobhann had some months before with her poussin. Jamie took a quick lesson in spatchcocking, and I lit the fires. Hoorah!

The fattoush happened towards the end of the planning stage as we realised that although it was a damp November night, we needed something zesty and fresh to counter-balance the smokeyness. A fattoush is a Lebanese salad, often consisting of strips of cucumber, stale flatbread, olives, coriander and tomatoes. It’s often sprinkled with sumac or za’atar, but we were all out. That’s what happens when you move to the country.

So, having googled spatchcocking (you basically turn the bird onto the breasts and remove the backbone, butterflying the bird and then stick some water soaked kebab sticks diagonally through it to hold the shape); the bird was prepared. The marinade was harissa, and as we didn’t have enough solely red chillies, we used both red and green. Again there appears to be many versions of harissa, and you can also buy it ready-made. It’s basically chilli, garlic and caraway seeds. We used:

Harissa

5 fresh chillies

1 tsp caraway seeds

1 tsp paprika

2 garlic cloves

Good pinch of salt

Handful of coriander, chopped

50ml olive oil

You then smear it all over the bird and marinade for at least 6 hours or even overnight. When it comes to the barbecuing, just cook and wait ‘til you can’t wait any longer before you devour it there and then. I.e. you want it to be blackened and the limbs to be falling off.

Fattoush (or our version given the ingredients at hand)

½ cucumber sliced lengthways, discarding overly seedy bits

Handful of green olives, sliced

8 cherry tomatoes, quartered

Few baby rocket and lettuce leaves

Handful of coriander, roughly chopped

Handful of parsley, roughly chopped

1 pitta, sliced in half lengthways, brushed with melted butter on both sides, baked in medium heated oven until crisp

The Dressing

1 clove of garlic, smashed up with pinch of salt

Few good glugs of olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

Throw into a bowl, and toss.

The Potatoes

4 largeish potatoes, cubed and par-boiled

1 leek, chopped

3 rashers of smoky bacon, finely chopped

5 or 6 cloves of garlic

Sprinkling of paprika and cayenne

Get roasting pan hot (190c), and throw in the above. Toss every twenty minutes or so. Cook until golden (just less than an hour).

This lovely dish materialised from the desire to clear out the freezer. We had two pheasants from the last season that needed scoffing and also last Autumn’s plums from the tree in our neighbour’s garden that I still hadn’t done anything with. It seemed like a match made in heaven and, with Molly’s Uncle Harry coming for the weekend, I had the perfect excuse to have a crack at doing something a bit different.

Essentially the plums are layered in the bottom of a casserole dish with some spices and garlic, pheasants are popped on top (breast down, wrapped in bacon) and it casseroles in a very low oven for a spell. You then work on the sauce once the pheasants are cooked and removed from the dish.

Served with roasted butternut squash and steamed leeks (what we had left from the veg box), the end result is surprisingly light. We had lots of lovely plum sauce leftover which has been popped back in the freezer and will go well with just about anything.

Large chunk of peeled cooking apple for stuffing into cavity of each bird

Streaky smoked bacon (enough to cover the breast of each bird – about 4 slices each)

About 8 juniper berries

1/2 tsp of allspice

1 tblsp of ground coriander

1 star anise

A couple cloves of garlic, whole (skins on to go in casserole)

For taste correction at the end: Salt and pepper, honey/sugar/red current jelly (something sweet – I used honey), a little concentrated stock if desired (I used about a quarter of a Knorr beef stock pot)

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 140 degrees celsius

Brown the pheasants lightly in a frying pan, turning as you go so all sides are browned. During the browning crack on with preparing rest of the casserole as below

Layer the plums on the bottom of a large, heavy based casserole dish (one that has a lid) and scatter with the garlic and spices

Once the birds are roughly browned, remove from pan and insert a large wedge of cooking apple into each bird. Wrap the breasts in bacon and place breast down on top of the plums

Cover with foil, then the lid and place in the middle shelf of the oven for an hour

After the hour, check the birds haven’t overcooked. At this stage of the cooking, the birds needed 15-20minutes more so I removed the foil and lid, removed the bacon from the breasts, and placed bacon on the top of the birds to crisp up a little in the oven, uncovered.

After this time, removed the birds and placed in a warm place to rest. Meanwhile, the pot was placed on the hob on a low heat to reduce and to work on the sauce. The sauce was still a little sharp and thin so I added the following to correct sauce, tasting as I went: 1/2 teaspoon a sugar, 2 short squirts of runny honey, pepper, about quarter-half Knorr beef stock pot (or any other concentrated stock option, ideally home made of course :)